So the folks over at SABC are pouring beers and ready to open the doors to the throngs of Austin beer lovers Saturday, February 11.

From the horse’s mouth:

uth Austin Brewing Company announces the Grand Opening party of Austin’s newest craft brewery. Saturday February 11, from 2-7 PM.

Please join us for authentic Austin music and the first opportunity to try our Belgian-style beer. Brewmaster Jordan Weeks will be on hand to give tours and talk about his specialty Belgian Style Golden Ale and Saison D’Austin. There will be souvenir tasting glasses and Tshirts for sale.

Live music is provided by The Everydudes. Yumé Burger, a new Austin food truck, will be on site vending freshly prepared meals. This will be a Green Event with 100% compostable recycling.

Spread the word, bring your 21-and-older friends, and come celebrate the craft beer resurgence in Austin!

South Austin Brewing Company is located at 415 East St Elmo, Unit 1D, Austin TX 78745, directly across from the Music Lab studios.

Sounds great.

More details:

What: South Austin Brewing Company Grand Opening
Where: 415 East Saint Elmo Road, Austin, TX 78745 (across from the Music Lab)
When: Saturday, Feb. 11, from 2PM to 7PM

Draught House will be putting on Belgian Beer Week this week.

Alright, see you out there.

Got this news in my inbox this morning. Alright. I sort of love hair cuts and I really love beer, so it’s good news all around.

From the horse’s mouth:

Today, Birds Barbershop proudly begins serving Shiner Bock and Shiner Light Blonde to all customers, in a co-branding partnership with the Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, Texas. Previously, Birds clients were served a complimentary Lone Star Beer with a haircut.

“Every drop of Shiner is brewed right here in Texas, and the incredible people behind the company are here too,” said Michael Portman, Birds’ co-founder. “We share a lot of Shiner’s values, including our passion for music. But making someone’s day is the ultimate co-branding opportunity, and nothing does that quite like a free Shiner to go with a new haircut.”

Portman and his co-founding partner Jayson Rapaport believe that serving Shiner Bock and Shiner Light Blonde will be a major upgrade to their clients’ experience and options, with no added cost.

Like many of Birds Barbershop’s marketing efforts, the Shiner partnership relies more on audience-sharing than cash-swapping. Shiner will supply the beer for Birds’ four central Austin locations, including a fifth Birds opening in the Hyde Park neighborhood this Fall. Shiner will be involved in ongoing Birds Barbershop promotions and events, including a late summer partnership kickoff party at Birds Barbershop on South Congress. Further invitation details will be included on a free koozie that will accompany all Shiner beers served at Birds Barbershops starting later this month.

“It’s a natural fit,” said Stacey Williams, National Director of Marketing for The Gambrinus Company. “We’re Texas born and raised and share our belief in fan loyalty with the folks at Birds Barbershop. This partnership gives us each another way to enhance the customer experience, be it with a great haircut, a cold Shiner beer or in most cases, both.”

With franchising underway, there are plans for future Birds Barbershop growth outside of Texas, giving Birds and Shiner the opportunity to boost each other’s brands in markets outside their home state.

Cheers to both parties and I look forward to the hair cut and beer party later this summer.

Also, free koozies is nice.

It’s time for another Summer Pils pub crawl brought to you by our friends at Saint Arnold. We had a great time last year and even got to make fun of craftaustin for wearing jeans out to a pub crawl in the middle of the summer. So grab your bleach stained shorts and some comfortable shoes, it looks like this pub crawl will include some walking! We’ll see you out there.

(Oh, and please disregard the bars listed on the ticket in the image, those were from Pub Crawl #2)

From Saint Arnold…

Saint Arnold Afternoon Austin Pub Crawl, this Saturday, April 9

We will utilize our “open house” schedule for the first 3 stops. This means that we will be signing tickets at all of the first three stops for three hours so you can enjoy a beer at each one with only a quarter of the people crammed into each establishment. You will get your ticket at whichever stop you decide to visit first. But, VERY IMPORTANT, we will only be handing out the tickets between 3 PM and 4 PM. Thus, you still need to start between 3 and 4. Then, at 6 PM, everybody will gather at one final stop and that is where we will award the prize.

The prize for making all four stops will be our newly designed Pub Crawl pint glass! And as always, designated drivers are both eligible for the award and encouraged to attend. Also, some locations will have a limited amount of Divine Reserve No. 11!

So here is the layout and our vague directions:

The first three stops:
A little bar full of LOVE and JOY! Think Neches river.
A ‘SKINNY’ little ballroom on San Jacinto/2nd St;
Is it GINGER or Maryann?

The final stop:
At 6:00 we’ll head west to a DIVINE place near Rio Grande, where we will have beer upstairs and downstairs.

Remember that cash is helpful, be kind to your waitstaff, and always, always appear in public enjoying a Saint Arnold. We hold those that arrange for transportation to and from or use designated drivers in the highest regard!

As you know this week there’s a thing called SXSW in town- you may like it or you may not; but we can all agree everyone loves a free party and free beer!

Especially Texas Craft Beer!
For you out of towners welcome to Austin, and try our beers!!!! Here is a breakdown of the craft beer parties in town- I have not looked up whether you need a badge/rsvp or not so please check the link!

I believe most are free. We hope to see you guys around town and definitely at these parties! There are lots of parties going on some I have not even listed or probably know about; so feel free to comment if you know of anything else.
Please be on the look out for the Austin Beer Guide also! .

Again, hope everyone has a save SX and stay hydrated cause there’s plenty of beer in this town!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, yeah?

Well, Over a Pint has been on a hiatus, but now it’s back. Huge thanks to JIB for coming back from Hawaii, surviving having a kid, and now making time to do some videos.

It’s been quite sometime since I last brewed a batch of beer using malt extract, but it is by far the easiest way to make homebrew and for most people it remains their first introduction to the hobby. Once you find out how easy it is to do there is usually no turning back.

So the other day JIB and I went to Austin homebrew to quickly cover what one would need to make their first batch of beer and hopefully demystify the process somewhat. To be honest I probably stumbled through most of what I intended to say and I cringed when watching myself, but hopefully those that haven’t taken the first step into the local homebrew store will realize just how painless it can be.

This video covers the trip to the local homebrew store, the basic equipment you will need and also what ingredients you will find. The people at the homebrew store are always happy to help answer any questions and suggest recipes.

In subsequent videos we cover making that batch of beer and then finally bottling it. Cheers!

I am a music fan. I’m lucky enough to live in Austin where we are so proud of our music scene that we declared ourselves the Live Music Capital of the WORLD! Aside from all of the bands that come through town or live here and play here, we are lucky enough to host a number of big music festivals every year. But the biggest of them all is South by Southwest. During SXSW over 1000 bands invade our town and play their music at every bar, alley, makeshift stage, and front-yard they can get a permit for.

If there is one thing that sxsw is about besides the music, it’s about going out and having a responsible good time. Well that’s what the beverage companies want me to say anyway. The fact of the matter is, there is a lot of drinking during SXSW. It may be a party put on by a new startup during the Interactive festival, a film premiere party, or just kids out drinking and dancing to their favorite band.

With all of the partying there is a great dilemma when it comes to the question of what to drink during the festival. Odds are your choices are limited to whatever the bar (or alley) is selling during the show. As a result you may be drinking a lot more of the National Beer of Texas than you would prefer. There’s nothing wrong with some Lone Star, especially in the right environment, but I noticed something new this year. Craft breweries are getting in on sponsorships this year. Also, more local bars are stocking gasp local beers. A movement is afoot and it looks like this year there will bring more “good” beer options than ever before.

Without further ado, here is my quick and dirty SXSW good beer survival guide.

Craft Brew Events

• Flying Dog is all over the place – You already know this if you read BTA, but it’s good beer and a lot of it!
• Dogfish Head/Gingerman SXSW Event Day 1 – Nice way to start out your Friday afternoon with a pint of Dogfish Head at the G-man.
• DC Does Texas – Good bands and free Dogfish Head at Lovejoys!
• 15th Annual Yarddog Throwdown At SXSW – Not free Dogfish Head, but only $3.  What better way to start off the Saturday of SXSW than with a bit of hair of the dog (pun intended)
• The Bay Area Takeover – All bands from the Bay area and free beer from Trumer Pils.  I haven’t had Trumer, but it gets a B+ from Beer Advocate

Bars with Good Beer

• Mohawk – Mohawk always has good bands and they usually have at least one Live Oak tap inside.
• Club DeVille – Club DeVille is next door to Mohawk on Red River and also has at least one Live Oak tap for your enjoyment. They also have 20 oz pint glasses.
• LoveJoys – Right in the middle of it all off 6th Street, you can get some microbrew.
• Ginger Man – When you need a break from the insanity of the music and 6th street, take a load off and enjoy some beer from the giant tap wall at Gingerman.
• Side Bar – Right off of Red River on 7th street you can find Real Ale on tap and a comfy couch. This is a great spot to catch some music and relax while in between bigger shows on Red River.
• Casino El Camino – Okay, I’m really including this one because they have a good Ms Pacman machine and I’m a dork. They also have some decent beers on tap and a fun atmosphere.

There are many more spots around downtown Austin to get good beer. Let us know your favorites in the comments. Also, please share any shows sponsored by Craft Brewers that I might have missed.

If you are skipping SXSW you can escape the influx of out-of-towners, hipsters, drunken idiots, and record label reps and head over to 512 to enjoy their Spring open house.

If you didn’t already know from this or this, Beer Connoisseur magazine held a party at the home of Independence Brewing Company on Saturday, February 27 for the launch of the second issue of their publication.  Some bloggers may have beaten us to the punch with a recap first, but how many had VIDEO?!?! (Scroll down now if you hate reading).

The weather and turnout ended up being great for everyone to rub elbows with fellow beer geeks and industry type folks (and maybe even a few of those professional media types).

While we were disappointed to see that not all the local brewers we had hoped for could make it out, no one went thirsty. In addition to some of the Independence staples, Lovejoy’s brought out their Blonde (which I did not have but heard was tasty) and Pale Ale, while North by Northwest sampled their Black Ale (excellent!) and IPA.

During our time there we also caught wind that Independence would soon be bottling their Stash IPA and Convict Hill Oatmeal Stout, probably their two best offerings in my opinion.

The Beer Connoisseur staff told us they took the time to visit Uncle Billy’s, the Ginger Man (where a pre-party was held for those who just couldn’t get enough beer) and some other local watering holes while in town to get better acquainted with the ever-growing Austin beer scene/brews.

Their publication and site are dedicated to all things related to beer culture. They hail from Atlanta, GA, which is experiencing a small but strong beer transformation (the Brick Store Pub consistently ranks as one of the best bars in the U.S. from Beer Advocate), and are excited about expanding into the Austin area.

Check out the video with Nick Kaye, managing editor, Beer Connoisseur to hear more about the work they are up to and what brought them to Austin. You can look for their quarterly magazine to start popping up around town soon.

Note: We feel it’s our duty to let you know we were extended a complimentary entry. Had I personally paid the entry fee, I would have been a lot more disappointed in the lack of breweries in attendance.

Welcome to Over a Pint episode 17. We recently got a chance to sit down with Steven Yarak, Jeff Young, and Karrine Karen Thornblom of Black Star Co-op.

We talked for a while. Over 15 minutes. We posted the first ten minutes here. We’ll post the B Side of the interview later this week (they take about 2 hours do with the importing and the editing and compressing and uploading and such.)

Steve, Jeff, and Karrine were excellent hosts and shared some nice beers with us as we discussed the history of the world’s first cooperatively owned brew pub, a little bit of their mission, membership perks, their beers (and why we can’t try them yet), their food, their new location and them getting LEED certified.

Jeff elaborates on the beers and talks a bit about the Infinity series, barrel aging and made some math jokes, too (I get it, they always CONVERGE on deliciousness!)

Hmm. So because the video was so long and we had to cut it up we see Karrine in the first video, but she doesn’t really talk much until the second… so just be patient. She is the buildout manager and is heading up the LEED certification push. What she has to say is interesting, just said in odd time increments that do not fit with the other content so well.

We shot this on an early Sunday afternoon. Actually, it was the Sunday after the Flying Saucer 2nd anniversary party. It takes us a bit to get in the swing of things (at least for me.)

We’re drinking the Delirium Noël and then move onto the Allagash Interlude (did I mention we went for 15 minutes?) So if you can, crack open a cold one and join us over a pint.

Enjoy!

Direct link to the mp3 HERE

Much thanks to Sean for fancy-ing up the audio!